“We need strong and clear voices on fiscal restraint like Steve King,” Christie said, according to a Sioux City newspaper.

A little too strong, it turned out.

King, one of many Republicans with whom Christie shared his formidable popularity and fundraising prowess, voted against the bill last Tuesday to send $50.7 billion in emergency aid to New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

Although Christie made calls and sent texts to House members seeking support for the crucial measure, which eventually was approved 241-180, he got little traction outside of the Northeast and among House Republican leaders.

The vote showed the limits of Christie’s influence — despite his growing celebrity, frequent appearances on national television and last week’s Time magazine cover — and foreshadowed the uphill battle the outspoken governor could face if he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

“It’s always possible he’s burned a couple of bridges because he’s been so blunt,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, where Christie delivered a keynote address last year. “People love his bluntness when it applies to President Obama. People don’t love his bluntness so much when it’s applied to his own party.”

Christie was already on thin ice with the conservative wing of his party for a string of statements reinforcing the idea that his most guarded principle is pragmatism.

He lavished praise on Obama for his leadership and compassion after the president visited New Jersey when Sandy struck and trash-talked House Speaker John Boehner, saying it was “disgusting” that he delayed an initial vote on the emergency aid.

And last week, he derided as “reprehensible” a National Rifle Association ad that called Obama a hypocrite for allowing the country to pay for Secret Service agents to guard his two young daughters.

The ad was roundly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike — although not all of them. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a tea party hero and another possible contender for the Republican nomination in four years, sharply criticized Christie and hinted that the party would have a long memory.

“I think criticizing the Second Amendment movement and the over-the-top ‘give me my money’ stuff, ‘I want all 60 billion now or I’ll throw a tantrum,’ I don’t think that’s going to play well in the Republican primary,” Paul said Saturday on “The Laura Ingraham Show” on Fox News.

Christie is a conservative-leaning Republican by New Jersey standards, but he would be perceived as moderate among a field of candidates who could end vying for the party’s nomination.

Philosophical divides are hard to bridge in a House caucus influenced by the tea party.
“They’re totally blinded by ideology,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. “These are people who are terrified of their more extreme constituents.”

In addition to campaigning for King, who could be an ally in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, Christie also took up the cause for two other congressional Republicans, Susan Brooks of Indiana and Ann Wagner of Missouri.

And in crisscrossing the country on behalf of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, Christie also was throwing his support behind Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Romney’s running mate.

King’s office declined to discuss the congressman’s relationship with Christie but issued a statement calling it “unconscionable to use this tragic storm as an excuse to throw aside our budget restraints, pile on spending measures unrelated to disaster relief, the majority of which will not even be spent out for years, and continue to pile debt on our children.”

Calling the votes a “contemporary example of no good deed going unpunished,” Baker said the naysayers could easily have voted for the relief in the name of reciprocity for the northeastern states that had supported aid packages for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters.

“It just tells you what the mind-set of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives is right now,” Baker said. “They will vote against anything.”

Christie wouldn’t give any lawmakers a pass, saying all bets are off when people are suffering.

“I find it disconcerting that they don’t understand when you’re dealing with this kind of disaster it’s different than regular spending,” he said at a Statehouse news conference last week. “We’ve always dealt with emergency spending differently.”

He personally lobbied lawmakers and followed up with the ones who failed him.

“They heard from me,” he said. And though Christie issued a veiled threat about whom he might support in the next round of primaries, he maintained he wouldn’t judge “friends” based on one decision.

If Christie wins re-election this year, he is in line to lead the Republican Governors Association in 2014 — also the year of gubernatorial races in 36 states. And they’ll all want an outspoken governor known for cutting spending on their side.

“It’s going to be a lot of work; it’s going to require a lot of money,” said Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report, “but it also presents lots of opportunity for him.”